Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a low-cost, short-distance, and interoperable wireless technology that has been adopted in the Bluetooth protocol version 4.0. BLE provides attractive features including low power consumption, long battery life, and enhanced communication range for BLE enabled devices.
iBeacon is an indoor BLE-based positioning technology introduced by the Apple Company in June 2013. The iBeacon technology defines a broadcast message format transmitted by a BLE enabled device, which may be referred to as an iBeacon message. A wireless communication device capable of conforming to the iBeacon technical specification may be referred to as an iBeacon device. The iBeacon message generally includes a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) used for uniquely identifying a wireless communication device, a major identifier (Major ID), and a minor identifier (Minor ID).
An iBeacon device broadcasts iBeacon messages at a certain time interval. A terminal device supporting the BLE technology (such as an IOS device) may receive the broadcast message through monitoring, decode the broadcast message to obtain identification information of the iBeacon device, and determine a distance between the terminal device and the iBeacon device based on signal strength of the received broadcast message. Information carried in the broadcast message is strictly defined in iBeacon technical specification, and if there is any modification or addition to the information of the broadcast message, the terminal device would not be able to decode the message correctly, resulting in a positioning failure.
In the iBeacon technology, the positioning function is implemented through associating the identification information of the wireless communication device with a physical location, and the physical location may indicate an advertisement screen of a department store, a pair of shoes in a store, a statue in a scenic spot, and so on. The physical location may often have a variable attribute. For example, an advertisement screen in a department store may show different advertisements at different time. As the format of the iBeacon broadcast message has been standardized by the protocol specification, it is not feasible to include variable attribute data in the broadcast message, and the broadcast message by itself does not indicate whether the attribute data of the physical location is changed.
Generally, a BLE connection may be established between a terminal device and a wireless communication device to communicate the variable attribute data associated with the wireless communication device. However, since the BLE connection is a point-to-point connection, a wireless communication device would not be able to broadcast the attribute data to multiple terminal devices simultaneously, causing delay of transmitting the attribute data. Moreover, power consumption of the wireless communication device in a BLE connection state is significantly greater than that of a broadcast state. Establishing BLE connections to transmit the variable attribute data would increase power consumption of the wireless communication device substantially.